Softly, With Grace
by Nocturnea
Summary: For a YJ anon meme prompt. Robin sees them, flying. They glide though the air, which is heady with the breath of a thoroughly amazed crowd, with the grace of wingless angels. Time slows down, and it happens. Then he wakes with a scream. Where's Batman? T for some disturbing scenes. Absolutely non-romantic, brotherly affection.


Robin sees them, flying. They glide though the air, which is heady with the breath of a thoroughly amazed crowd, with the grace of wingless angels. Time slows down, and it happens— he's seen it before time and again, almost never dreams anything else of them, why would this time be any different? He can hear the screams, of them and the crowd... And then everything stops. At first he's relieved, glad to be awoken before he can hear the terrifying crunch sound that's echoed and haunted his dreams for almost five years, but then he realizes he's not awake. It never takes this long for his eyes to snap open, for him to try in vain to hold back the same distressed scream that first tore through the air when he was barely nine years old. Robin wonders for a moment if the nightmare is gone for the night, if maybe he'll get one of the rare pleasant dreams he's had once or twice since that day, but he is quickly contradicted.

The nightmare gets worse. First, he sees it all over again. That's bad enough. But then he sees other things, other deaths and other brutalities. Some he knows have happened, some he's seen, and some are part of some possible future— a sick, twisted one, he can't help but think.

He sees it just as Alfred told him; a tall, mustachioed man wearing a suit walks out of a movie theatre, along with a beautiful, dark-haired woman clad in a fancy lavender dress and pearl necklace. Between them, a young boy pretends to stab an invisible opponent with a sword. Both adults laugh fondly, while the boy continues his game. They turn into a dark alley, past a sign labeled "Park Row". Robin's dream doesn't follow, thankfully, but he can still see the flashes of the gunshots, hear the child's— Bruce's— voice calling out for his parents.

Next, he sees his friend, Barbara (she's two years older than him, but he knows her from AP Calculus and the fact that she's Batgirl, though she doesn't know he knows the latter). Instead of being fifteen, she looks like an adult, maybe in her early twenties, and she's sitting in what must be her own apartment. The doorbell rings, and she gets up to answer it. Robin feels a surge of trepidation as she opens the door to reveal the Joker, holding a gun. Barbara tries to run, though Robin's not sure what it'll do but delay whatever Joker intends. The young boy is sure something inside him snaps as the bullet tears through his friend's spine, certainly killing her or leaving her paralyzed for life.

A stream of short scenes cycle by, with the only things he hears being anguished screams, heartwrenching sobs, and the sounds of violence (gunfire, explosions, cries of pain, et cetera).

Hopefully last, he is whisked away to a debris-filled place he doesn't recognize. He sees Wonder Woman, Superman, and... Superman? The three are standing, along with some other heroes he doesn't recognize, around someone or something. Robin is forced by his dream to look closer, and desperately wishes to wake up. There, in the center of the tight ring of heroes whose expressions range from somber to sobbing, lies Conner. His body is bruised and bloody, and he's perfectly still. Robin tries to look away, but it's a dream and he isn't physically there, isn't physically seeing this, so he can't. He can't turn his head, close his eyes, or even scream. And god(s) above does he want to.

Suddenly his eyes snap open as his scream rips through the room, and his bleary eyes register a plain metal ceiling. He can hardly see anything with how dark it is in the windowless, unlit room, but he sees enough to tell that it's not his room in the manor. Why wouldn't he be in the manor? Panic rises and falls within him in the span of seconds as he remembers that Batman is off-world on a League mission and Alfred is in England visiting family. He must be in Mount Justice, since Batman still doesn't let him stay home alone for more than a few hours after that one time with Rupert Thorne (which neither caped crusader likes to talk about, but Robin knows it's the main reason Batman thinks he, or rather Dick Grayson, can't be left alone in stately Wayne Manor overnight).

Still, he decides he should confirm. The nightmare was much, much worse than usual, and he can't sneak into Bruce's bed since Bruce is away and he's not at the manor. But because he's in Mount Justice, he can confirm that the last part of the dream was just a night terror. The little bird decides to seek out Conner.

Conner wakes up with a yawn as he hears the door open. He looks at the visitor and is shocked to see Robin, clad in Superman pyjamas (though the younger/older boy still has his mask on), standing in the doorway. The thirteen-year-old's hair is disheveled, and Conner's keen eyes see what appear to be tear tracks on his friend's face. Conner stares for a second, and is a bit surprised when the smaller (because he's older, chronologically) teen walk over and sit on the side of his bed.

"Can I... Can I sleep with you?" Robin asks, somewhat hesitantly. Conner nods, and with a slight smile Robin snuggles under the blanket next to him. Conner's first thought is that Robin is a bit warm, and then it occurs to him that Robin always tries to act older to make sure the other team members don't treat him like a child. But right now, here he is curled up and pressing himself into Conner's side.

"What's wrong?" Conner can't help but wonder, and his thoughts come out before being hidden to do so.

"I... Don't laugh, please." The seriousness with which Robin makes his request is downright alarming to Conner, because hearing his tone makes the clone suddenly notice more how childish Robin is (despite his trying to hide it and his assertions and the evidence to the contrary). Nevertheless, Conner agrees. Robin takes a deep breath before continuing. "Okay... I had a nightmare." Conner blinks. A nightmare? What could it have been to have shaken the young hero this much?

"About what?" When initial Robin's response to the Boy of Steel's question is an attempt to stifle a sniffle, Conner fears he made a mistake. The Boy Wonder snuggles up against Conner more, as he usually does with Bruce during one of these talks, and tries to steady his breathing.

"About..." Robin isn't sure sure what to tell him. The Dark Knight still hasn't given him permission to tell Conner and the rest of the team his secret ID (though he told Wally years ago, when he went on his first official no-mentors mission with the speedster), so he'll have to leave the parts about his and Bruce's parents out, but other than that the young bird decides he can tell his friend. "Well, a lot of things. Some things I can't, and or don't want to share. But the reason I came here... The last thing I saw, before waking up, was you." Robin's voice trembles as he continues. "A bunch of Leaguers were standing around you, and... A-And..." In an impulsive decision he would not make were he any less shaken by the dream, Robin hugs Conner with more strength than the half-Kryptonian thought possible from the tiny, fully human boy. Robin cries into Conner's chest, at first chiding himself for doing so and then deciding that he deserves one cry once in a while. The nightmare that has plagued him since he was nine causes him pain whenever it rears its terrible head (which, thankfully, has been going down to one to three times in an average week as opposed to how it used to show up every night and almost whenever he closed his eyes), but combined with everything else he saw, now more than ever he needs someone to lean on. Conner nods, not quite guessing what Robin saw but understanding that it must have been terrible for the strong little bird to act so vulnerable. So they lay there in silence, neither having anything more to say.

For some odd reason, the thought floats into Conner's head that M'gann listens to music when she cooks. He looks at the boy curled up beside him, and a song pops into his head (it must be one of M'gann's favourites, if she's played it enough that he has it memorized despite not really trying to or paying much attention).

"Darkness and silence, things of the night  
Try to forgive, don't forget the light  
Like the dawn each day coming again  
Anytime, anywhere, I'm here for you my friend." Conner sang quietly. He felt Robin start to relax a bit.

"Under the moonlight, blue dancing waves  
Gently and warmly will fill dark caves  
And while in this world, bad times will come  
But no matter what don't forget the sun." Conner mused internally about how fitting this song was, for him and for Robin. They were close friends— almost brothers, really— and they would always be there for eachother. Robin, Wally, and Kaldur had given him the most precious gift of all— freedom. But they had also, in a way, given him life. Without them he'd still be in a pod in Cadmus, and without him each of them would, on one occasion or other, have died. Without him being the first to stand up to Batman, the team might never have been formed and many lives might have been lost. Conner smiled warmly at the child slowly falling asleep next to him.

"Rise into the sky, softly with grace  
Do all you can, take your own pace  
Close your eyes and sleep, but know when you wake  
I will be here for you, make no mistake..." Conner stifles a yawn as he finishes the song, noticing that Robin has fallen asleep. The clone soon drifts off to sleep too, wrapping his arms around Robin— around his little brother— protectively.

When Conner wakes up the next morning, the first thing to register in his mind is that Robin's gone. Feeling a brotherly instinct to make sure the raven-haired young hero is safe, Conner doesn't bother changing out of his sleepwear (a blue Superman t-shirt and black flannel pants) before rushing to the door and opening it— to come face to face with a very angry-looking Batman.

"Robin walked out of here five minutes ago. Did you sleep with my son last night?" Batman demands. Conner blinks in confusion. Wasn't that what he should have done when Robin came in and asked if he could?

"Yeah, of course I did." Conner replies simply. Batman feels a bit jealous. He's the one Dick's supposed to go to for comfort when he has a particularly bad nightmare! The calmer part of him argues that it's a good thing for the boy if Dick has someone else to ask for help, and the part of him that went into DaddyBats-mode has to agree. Besides, he's been worried for quite a while that only ever hanging out with Wally will mean his little bird takes a bad example (Wally's about the age where, if Batman remembers correctly (and being Batman, he probably does), kids start to swear a lot and make jokes about things Dick is too young (in Batman's opinion anyway) to learn about. Conner, while physically older, is not yet that age chronologically). Maybe this could be a good thing... But if Dick asks to tell Conner his ID, too, then Batman is rethinking his conclusion.

In the meantime, the Dark Knight stalks off to go and try to force Clark to stop neglecting his sort-of son. For the umpteenth time. On his way out of the mountain he stops and ruffles Dick's hair, not caring who sees since obviously the boy had a terrible dream (more so than normal) the previous night. Anyways, if his son really is slipping away (and he's not just being paranoid), he needs to take these opportunities more. Maybe a father-son camping trip for a weekend sometime... He realizes he's getting distracted, and before going through the zeta-beam barks out an order for the team to start training (to maintain his air of being an intimidating creature of the night). Just as the beam whisks him off to Metropolis, he hears his son laughing over some shared joke with his friends, and smiles.

* * *

_So, did you like it? The prompt I used for this (I don't know the correct terminology there) is: _

_"Superboy and Robin sleep together in a completely not sexual way. For whatever reason (nightmares, insomnia etc.)they sleep better when it's the two of them snuggled up under a mountain of blankets, and they're just being held by the other.  
Make it as fluffy as possible!  
Bonus Points if: Batman catches them and pulls SB aside all like " D did you sleep with him?"and SB not understanding and being all like "yeah, of course" cause he did sleep with him, like in the same bed and everything."_

_I named it after a Fire Emblem BGM. That theme is good for the nightmare part, but the real reason I chose it (aside from the fact I listened to it while writing Robin's nightmare) is because I always get the name confused with another BGM called "Receive the Blessings of Water" (if you want to know how Superboy's lullaby (which I wrote the words to) goes, it's the main piano tune of that song). So, yeah! Please review and tell me what you think of it. I'm still confused about that bonus, but I included the lines._


End file.
